Course Schedule

DUE TO COVID-19 CLOSURES, THIS COURSE HAS MOVED FROM A FACE-TO-FACE MODEL TO DISTANT LEARNING. CHANGES ARE REFLECTED IN THE NEW SCHEDULE PAGES.

NOTE: THIS SCHEDULE IS OUT OF DATE. PLEASE REFER TO THE DROP DOWN MENU UNDER SCHEDULE FOR THE MOST CURRENT READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS.

Key:
[Library Access] – You can access this material through the Library’s website with your Graduate Center Barcode and credentials.
[Commons] – PDF in the CUNY Academic Commons Group in the Files section: http://cuny.is/group-texts-contexts-a-seminar-in-interdisciplinary-studies
[Book] – There are 3 required books for the class.

Week	Date	Topic	In-Class	Reading Due	Writing Due
Week 1	1/28/2020	Introductions	Introductions Review Syllabus & Course Blog and Commons Group Requirements Read Washington Post Article and Twitter Thread	Tweet: “Is it ok to cut books in half?” https://twitter.com/i/events/1219596656590516225 Washington Post Opinion: “If you love books, do not cut them in half.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/21/if-you-love-books-do-not-cut-them-half/
Week 2	2/4/2020	What are the stakes?	Discussion	Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. Planned Obsolescence. 15-120 [Library Access] Nell Irvin Painter. “Truth in Print” Keynote from Women in the Book Arts, a Symposium at The Grolier Club: https://youtu.be/r9j7HEo6Ddc?t=1448 <Start at 24:00 and end at 1:07:00> Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text” [Commons] Cummings, Brian. “The Book as Symbol” from The Book: A Global History. Eds. Micahel F. Suarez, S.J. & H.R. Woudhuysen. Oxford UP: Oxford, 2013 93-96. [Commons]	Create a CUNY Academic Commons profile at https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/register/ and send your login to [email protected] before 2/4.
Week 3	2/11/2020	Organizing & Describing Texts (Bibliographies)	Visit from Stephen Zweibel, Digital Scholarship Librarian “Introducing Library Research and the Mina Rees Library.” Review Academic practices by field Introduce Annotated Bibliography assignment	Williams and Abbott, pp 1-56 [Book] Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. Section 14.1-14.23 & 14.61-64 [Library Access] MLA Handbook Part 1 [Book] MALS LibGuide: https://libguides.gc.cuny.edu/MALS Install Zotero : https://www.zotero.org/	Bibliography of 10 sources in correct citation style about academic publishing or scholarly communication in a field you are interested in.
Week 4	2/18/2020	Making Books	Field Trip to the Center for Book Arts	Abbot & Williams, pp 57-70 Fry, Stephen. “The Machine that Made Us” (Gutenberg Documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ88yC35NjI (1 hour) Houston, Keith. “The Prints and the Pauper: Johannes Gutenberg & the Invention of Moveable Type.” The Book pp 102-154 [Commons] Werner, Sarah. Studying Early Printed Books. Part 1 pp 8-25 [Commons]	Blog: Drawing from the week’s reading, write a 300-word blog post responding to the following question: How does the history of print shape the way we read today? Explain how things have or have not changed since the early days of print.
Week 5	2/25/2020	Writing / Composing Texts	Discussion	Robinson, Andrew. “Writing Systems” The Book: A Global History. eds Suarez & Woudhuysen pp. 3-18 [Commons] Kirschenbaum. Track Changes. pp 92-206 [Commons] MLA Handbook Part 2 – MLA Style Chicago Manual of Style “Manuscript Preparation, Editing, and Proofreading 2.1-2.140 [Library Access]	Blog: Write 300-word reflection for the blog about how the technologies of writing impact your composition process.
Week 6	3/3/2020	Text / Image : Imagetext	Discussion / Making	Drucker, Figuring the Word pp 55-75 [Commons] W.J.T. Mitchell, “Imagetext” [Commons] Bolter & Grusin, “Remediations” [Commons] Podcast w/ Nick Sousanis “Unflattening: Revolutionizing thought in Comics” https://www.nga.gov/audio-video/audio/sousanis-unflattening.html Sousanis “Behind the Scenes of a Dissertation in Comics Form” Digital Humanities Quarterly http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/4/000234/000234.html OPTIONAL: Sousanis & Monastersky The Fragile Framework : https://www.nature.com/news/the-fragile-framework-1.18861	Select a thesis or capstone project from the list provided and write a 300-word response about how the form of the academic project impacts the audience it serves and its meaning.
Week 7	3/10/2020	Editing Texts (Scholarly Editions and Editing Scholars)	Potential Visitor: Matt Gold	Abbott & Williams, Textual Criticism and Editorial Procedure pp 71-126 Price, Ken. “Electronic Scholarly Editions” in Companion to Digital Literary Studies. ed Schreibman and Siemans http://digitalhumanities.org:3030/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405148641/9781405148641.xml&chunk.id=ss1-6-5&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ss1-6-5&brand=9781405148641_brand Manifold: Review the website here: https://manifoldapp.org/ Debates in the Digital Humanities: https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/ Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: https://digitalpedagogy.mla.hcommons.org/	Blog Post: In 300 words, explain what kinds of choices might an editor need to make? How might those choices shape future knowledge in a field?
Week 8	3/17/2020	Representing Texts	Discussion / Presenting Digital Editions	de Vera, Samantha ” We the Ladies …. have been deprived a voice. Uncovering Black Women’s Lives through the Colored Conventions Archive. pp 1-9 [Commons] McLuhan, Marshall “The Medium is the Message” from Understanding Media [Commons] Benjamin, Walter “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Illuminations. ed. Hannah Arendt [Commons] Explore the following collections / editions: Colored Conventions Project; Orlando; Women’s Writer’s Project; Blake Archive; Dickinson Electronic Archive	Digital Edition Review: 750-1000 words max
Week 9	3/24/2020	Artist Books, Zines, & Ephemeral Text	Discussion / Potential Visitor (Stefano Morello)	Drucker, Johanna. Figuring the Word Part V “Artists’ Books Past and Future” pp 166-210 [Commons] Gitelman, Lisa. ‘Amateurs Rush In” Paper Knowledge pp. 136-150 [Commons] Project: zinecat.org Digital Capstone: Jenna Freedman and Lauren Kehoe [CUNY Academic Works] Shared Authority: Zine Whitepaper	Project Proposals Due: 300-words about the topic of your final paper and the format that you would like your project to take
Week 10	3/31/2020	Text as Data	Digital Explorations	Weingart, Scott. “The Route of a Text Message, A Love Story.” https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzdn8n/the-route-of-a-text-message-a-love-story Gailey, Amanda. “Some Problems with Big Data.” [Commons] Hayles, N. Katherine. “Human and Machine Cultures of Reading: A Cognative-Assemblage Approach.” PMLA October 2018 pp 1225-1242 [Library Access] Sachs & Piper. “Technique and the Time of Reading.” PMLA October 2018 pp1259-1267 [Library Access] McSweeney, Michelle. “Politically Polarizing Media Coverage.” https://michellejm.github.io/guns_in_America/ Review: Documenting the Now, Hathi Trust, Google N-Gram Viewer Video: How to Digitize a Book: https://youtu.be/-M95Ob4kIak; Make an eBook from Your Own Book Collection: https://youtu.be/VQkNJUmWzWY?t=440; Linear Book Scanner: https://youtu.be/4JuoOaL11bw	Annotated Bibliography: 5 sources each with 2-3 sentence annotations
	4/7/2020	No Class	CUNY Wednesday	Continue revising your final paper abstract.
	4/14/2020	No Class	Spring Break	Continue revising your final paper abstract.
Week 12	4/21/2020	Talking About Books	Site Visit (hopefully) to The Drama Book Shop	Leah Price, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books [Book]	2-page Outline or “Wireframe” of Your Final Paper/Project
Week 13	4/28/2020	Preservation, Discovery, & Recovery (see next page)	Group discussion	Laura Helton, Justin Leroy, Max A. Mishler, Samantha Seeley, and Shauna Sweeney. “The Question of Recovery: An Introduction” (1-18) [Commons] Gardner, Eric. “Duty and Daily Bread” Unexpected Places pp 3-21 [Commons] Fagan, Ben. “Chronicling White America.” pp 10-13 [Commons] Gallon, Kim. “Mining Images of Race & Gender in 20th Century Black Periodicals” [Commons] Hopwood, Elizabeth. “Discoverability and the Problem of Access.” American Periodicals pp 7-10 [Commons] Johnson, Jessica Marie. “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text p 57-79 [Commons] Kraus, Kari. “When Data Disappears.” NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/when-data-disappears.html Thesis / Capstone Guidelines: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Liberal-Studies/Courses/Thesis-Capstone-Project Library Guidelines for Thesis / Capstone Deposit	300-word Blog post: How do the Library Guidelines for Thesis and Capstone projects address the concerns this week’s authors have about preservation, discovery, and recovery?
Week 14	5/5/2020	Social Lives of Texts (see next page)		MLA Handbook: Section 3 “In-Text Citations” Chicago Manual of Style Sections 14.24 – 14.60 Viral Texts: viraltexts.org “”Fugitive Verses”: The Circulation of Poems in Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers” https://viraltexts.org/2016/04/08/fugitive-verses/ Fugitive Verses: http://fugitiverses.viraltexts.org/ Chicory Project: https://collections.digitalmaryland.org/digital/collection/mdcy Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jq8LbRChSA; 3 Part Blog Posts at NCPH https://ncph.org/history-at-work/black-arts-movement-poetry-as-public-history/ https://ncph.org/history-at-work/decolonizing-the-digital-literary-canon/ https://ncph.org/history-at-work/doin-it-for-the-gram/	3 pages of writing toward a draft of your final paper that includes in-text citations in either MLA or Chicago Manual Style.
Week 15	5/12/2020	Disciplining Texts		Chuh, Kandice. “Knowledge Under Cover.” The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities “After Man” Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2019. 26-50 [Commons] Hayles & Pressman. “Making Critique: A Media Framework” Comparative Textual Media vii-xxiii [Commons] Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. Generous Thinking pp. 82-131 [Commons] Society for Textual Studies CFP for 2020: https://textualsociety.org/2020-sts-conference-call-for-papers/	2-pages on how your work relates to other work that has been done in your field or in related fields, and how your work makes connections between disciplinary conversations.
Week 16	5/19/2020	Final Papers Due			Final Papers Due

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Texts in Context

A Seminar in Interdisciplinary Studies

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